Paging is an integral part of wireless communications, including a cellular communications system, since paging is required for every call having a mobile termination at a mobile station such as a mobile cellular telephone. In a typical cellular communications system, the locations where the mobile station may be located are divided into cells, and a paging message is sent to those cells to determine a current location of the mobile station. At least one application processor having a Central Processing Unit (CPU) is used both for paging and for regular call control functions once a mobile station is found.
Two of the major parameters that indicate performance of such a communications system is the capacity of the communications system and the cost for that capacity. Capacity indicates the volume of calls that can be processed by the system, and a common unit of measure for capacity is KBHCA or Kilo (thousands of) Busy Hour Call Attempts. This unit indicates the number of calls that can be processed per hour during a critical time period of a busy hour in cellular communications traffic such as around 5:00 PM during a weekday when the most number of wireless calls are attempted.
A call requires data processing in the cellular communications system, and a higher calling capacity requires higher processing power. The amount of processing power determines the cost of the cellular communications system since higher processing power means a higher number of central processing units and more elaborate networking among the more numerous central processing units. Thus, cost constrains the capacity of the cellular communications system.
When a calling party first attempts to reach a called party having a mobile station within a cellular communications system, paging is necessary to determine the current location of the mobile station of the called party. The mobile station may be located in any of the cells of a cellular communications system. Thus, paging requires much of the processing resources of the cellular communications system since a paging message is sent to each of the cells to query if the mobile station is located within any one of those cells. Because of this intense processing requirement, part of the cost for call termination in a cellular communications system is presently charged to the called party receiving a call.
Because of the cost of receiving a call, empirical evidence shows that a cellular communications subscriber prefers to make calls rather than receive calls using the cellular communications system. The cellular communications subscriber has substantially little control over receiving phone calls on the cellular phone, and yet, the subscriber is charged for the received calls. Thus, the cellular communications subscriber feels constrained from giving out a cellular phone number, and uses the cellular communications system to receive phone calls in only limited circumstances. Empirically, the cellular communications system is presently a lop-sided system with such subscribers making a disproportionately larger number of calls and receiving only a small number of calls.
Thus, an apparatus and method that reduce the amount of CPU resource used for paging would drive down the cost of receiving calls on cellular communications systems. Such an invention increases capacity of the cellular communications system and reduces the cost of mobile termination such that the cost of receiving calls in a cellular communications system is reduced. Thus, subscribers having mobile stations such as cellular telephones may more freely receive calls on the cellular telephone. As a result, the present invention may result in a cellular communications system with a more equal number of phone calls being made and being received, via the cellular telephone.